Add India to the list of countries furious with Canada over Justin Trudeau’s leadership.
How many more countries can Trudeau alienate?
The PM was elected on a promise to put Canada back on the world stage. Not that we had left, but in his view, Canada under Stephen Harper no longer put forward true Canadian values.
Since being elected, Trudeau has alienated the United States and China, our two largest trading partners.
He can’t even say he accomplished either feat in the pursuit of a grand goal like standing up for human rights, he just annoyed them and handled issues badly.
Same with Saudi Arabia, a truly horrible regime but one that we annoyed over a tweet that would accomplish nothing. Chrystia Freeland’s Twitter outrage at the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia would have been better dealt with, and most likely accomplished more, if she had used quiet diplomacy.
Now India has gone from annoyed to furious with Trudeau after he ordered the removal of the term “Sikh extremism” from an intelligence report on terrorism.
The 2018 Public Report on the Terrorism Threat to Canada, released last December, originally referenced Sikh extremism alongside the threats posed to our country by Sunni and Shia Islamist extremism and right-wing extremism.
But after political pressure by some within the Sikh community in Canada, and worried about losing key seats in the Toronto and Vancouver areas, Trudeau had the report amended.
Now instead of saying Sikh extremism is a problem in Canada, we have to be worried about, “Extremists who Support Violent Means to Establish an Independent State Within India.”
I don’t think that means an independent Quaker homeland in India. It’s all about the dream of Khalistan, a separate Sikh homeland.
Trudeau thinks it is all brilliant politics.
He’s still smarting from being mocked for his horrible trip to India last year and this is just the move he thinks will set him right with voters rich with Sikh Canadians.
Maybe he is right and it will work at home, but in India, the largest democracy in the world and a fast growing economy, Trudeau, and therefore Canada, isn’t exactly getting a warm welcome from Indian government officials.
Most of the public reaction from Indian government officials has come through Captain Amarinder Singh, the chief minister for Punjab, a predominately Sikh state within India.
Singh, himself a Sikh, has had to deal with the violence from the types of people that Trudeau made sure wouldn’t be named in the terrorism report.
“The move is a threat to Indian and global security,” Singh said on the weekend.
“Trudeau was playing with fire with his decision to assuage inflamed domestic passions through this ill-considered move,” he added.
During his trip to India last year, Trudeau was granted a last minute meeting with Singh who had refused to meet with our PM because he thought the Canadian government was too soft on Khalistani terrorist activities, including fundraising in Canada.
At their meeting, Singh even gave Trudeau a list of people and groups the Indian government had trouble with.
“Trudeau had been informed of Khalistani activists being involved in financing terror activities in India from Canada,” Singh told the Hindustan Times.
According to Singh, Trudeau didn’t act on the list and instead caved to political pressure.
“It was obvious that Trudeau had played safe in view of the upcoming elections in Canada,” Singh said.
Trudeau has made the calculation that he would rather cozy up to that minority in the Sikh community that would use violence to achieve political goals than actually stand for Canadian values.
In the meantime, he is driving a wedge between us and a major market for Canadian goods.
Votes matter more to Trudeau than principle, values or jobs.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2019
